ABOUT THE AUTHOR

​C.D. Miller is an as-yet unpublished writer working in the fantasy/horror genre. In 2005 he self-published a literary novel, Against the Strength of Night, selling copies in local stores. He has been hard at work on several projects, including an epic high fantasy trilogy, for a ridiculous number of years now, and hopes very soon to be shopping manuscripts around to agents and publishers.

C.D. Miller

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what you need to know about dark heights

Dark Heights started out as an experiment in defeating procrastination and perfectionism, a serial novel that would be published regularly online. I wanted to work on something that would explore current issues and get into the personal lives of the characters with some intensity. And I wanted the story to be able to turn, in sudden and unexpected ways, towards a kind of vivid and visceral modern fantasy/horror, with the sense that anything can happen. To be certain the fiction of Dark Heights is not your typical online serial: the chapters are longer, the content can be dense and sometimes strange, everything is much more interconnected than you might expect.

It's a dream for anyone obsessed with revealing the shadows that collect in the corners of the world.

Dark Heights is dedicated to those of us who love to be lost in between realities.

Very early in the process my brother, Chris Miller, an accomplished composer and musician, came on board to create music for the website. As we began to explore both the fiction and the music, we realized that we wanted to collaborate and produce the content together. As a writer, I came to rely on Chris's evocation of the emotions and atmosphere of the world of Dark Heights. We create every chapter together. Sometimes Chris will write the music based on our conversations about the fiction and I'll use it to work on what I'm writing. Sometimes I give him a finished chapter and he writes and records the music. Quite often we've shared drafts and notions of what we're doing and the music and the writing changes as our work takes shape.

Once you read a few chapters you'll realize that Chris's music doesn't operate like a typical movie soundtrack. It doesn't score the prominent moments like signposts telling you what to think and feel. Instead he opens the chapters out from the inside, building a complementary narrative in music that reflects what the fiction is doing, in particular what the characters are thinking and what they go through in the story.

Dark Heights is the fiction and the music, together. We've searched very hard to see if anyone else is doing anything like this. Doesn't look like it.

Part One has just been completed and its total length is 96 000 words, a full novel. There's over 215 minutes of music to go with it.